Burnt Sugar Read online

  *

  Since the last elections, Ma shouts at the television every time the new prime minister comes on. He wears his saffron mantle like the attribute of a Hindu deity – with stylized pleats always crumpled in the same place. He is the reason, she says, that she’s never known real love.

  I wake up to the darkness. My phone is lit with a dozen missed calls from Dilip. Lights flash from the living room. My mother must be watching muted but moving mouths on TV.

  The sky is dark, but the industrial complex fifteen kilometres away gives us pink light as a prelude to the sun. Ma isn’t on the sofa when I come out, and I don’t see her at first, standing behind the sheer curtains with her body pressed against the window. The woven drapes, grey-and-white paisley, shroud her in part, leaving shadows on her body. Through the fabric, I see her dark birthmark, an oblong disc that interrupts her shoulder blade, a bullseye on her back. Her chest is still, as though she isn’t breathing.

  She is naked, and steps back to look at her reflection in the glass. She looks at mine, as it appears next to hers, then back and forth, as though she cannot tell the difference. Opposites often resemble each other.

  I touch Ma’s elbow and she flinches. Then she points to the TV screen, to the man she has silenced with the remote control.

  ‘You’re in it together,’ she whispers.

  ‘Ma.’ I try to calm her, to pull her away from the glass, but she moves back, her eyes feral, and I’m not sure she recognizes my face. She recovers quickly, but that look is enough to take the air out of my lungs. For a moment she did not know who I am and for that moment I am no one.

  I coax her back to bed and call the doctor. His voice is gruff. How did I get this number, he wants to know. Our call suddenly feels intimate, as though I have crossed a line. His wife must be beside him, disturbed from her sleep. I imagine what they wear to bed, how their clothes shift through the night. I feel a dampening between my legs.

  ‘My mother didn’t recognize me for a second,’ I say.

  ‘That can happen. You should familiarize yourself with how this will progress.’ His tongue sounds large in his mouth, his voice betrays annoyance and I have the sensation of failing an exam.

  I spend the day turning ideas over in my mind. Science has never interested me, but I open myself up to the deluge of jargon.

  I look up the chemical composition of my mother’s medicine, a series of elegant hexagons, and a molecule of hydrogen chloride hanging off like a tail. I unearth the animal studies, diagrams of rat brains that were opened to chart their activity. The little tablets she has to take inhibit cholinesterase, an enzyme that breaks down the neurotransmitter acetylcholine. This promotes activity that should improve symptoms of the disease’s progression.

  Acetylcholine build-up in the body can be toxic.

  Acetylcholine is found in pesticides and in chemical-warfare agents, commonly called nerve gas.

  A low dose of something can be a panacea. A high dose can be fatal.

  I open another window. Helicobacter pylori causes stomach ulcers and cancer if it multiplies out of control, but when completely absent from the bodies of children, rates of asthma increase.

  I wish moderation were a comfortable state.

  The list of side effects is longer than the doctor suggested. I want to call him again but I’m afraid. My relationship with him is strained. Can it be called a relationship? I hold myself tightly against thinking too long on this.

  There are chat groups dedicated to the demise of Donepezil, citing inefficacy, among other grievances. Krill oil is recommended across the board for brain health. There is something complete in the make-up of this minuscule crustacean, this creature that can move its body with legs that are nothing more than filaments. Krill is better than fish, and a diagram explains why: the brain prefers the phospholipid form krill oil takes.

  I copy the structures and chemical formulae of the oil down on a writing pad, but my drawings diverge from the originals, looking more like krill than molecules. The exoskeleton is a delicate ethyl ester, and three fatty acids form its flailing limbs. As I try to continue with purchasing the oil, I receive a warning that the company are not responsible for Indian customs delays.

  They remind me that the oil is photosensitive and will spoil at high temperatures.

  My husband, Dilip, grew up in America and he breaks his rotis with two hands. I met him a couple of years ago, after he had moved to Pune for work. The move was a demotion, but he didn’t mention that when he started chatting me up at the German Bakery on North Main Road. I wasn’t expecting to see another person there, since it was a Sunday morning and no one goes to the café much since a bomb went off inside in 2010.

  I settled in a red plastic chair with my laptop as he slid into the place next to me. He smiled. His teeth were straight white tiles. He asked me if I knew the Wi-Fi password and if he could buy me a coffee. I told him coffee made me jittery, sometimes gassy. He asked me what I was working on, and even though I didn’t want to tell him about my drawings, I reasoned that artists couldn’t be fearful about sharing secrets with strangers.

  He inhaled as he listened and leaned forward. The red plastic chair strained under his weight and his knee closed into an acute angle. We stared at each other for a while and he asked me if I wanted to go out for a meal that weekend. I blinked at the word ‘meal’ before realizing he meant dinner. (I have picked up many of his speech patterns since then.)

  He asked me if I knew any of the restaurants in the ashram lane.

  ‘Yes, I spent some of my childhood living in the ashram. I know that area well,’ I said.

  The date was pleasant. We shared spaghetti, cooked and plated in little nests. Green leaves of basil were tucked into the edges, with roasted red and yellow cherry tomatoes in the centre, situated like unhatched eggs. The tall banyan trees threw shadows around the floodlit courtyard, and the faces of occupants were obscured. We had a table hidden in the corner, one that would have been perfect for a couple having an affair, so perfect they could have sent each other one-character communications – a number to denote the time – because the location could stay the same.

  I said this out loud without editing myself and he found it amusing, creative even, and asked me if I liked to make up stories. ‘Communicating as efficiently as possible has always interested me,’ I said. I wanted to ask if we were on a date. I usually slept with men who were friends or whom I met through friends, and we remained something between friends and lovers, but there was never a full plate of food involved or the payment of a bill.

  Dilip tells the story differently. Or maybe the story just sounds different in his voice, with its round vowels and chewed words. He describes the feeling he had when he saw me, says I looked like a bohemian artist, and remembers the shirt I was wearing had paint on it. This is a fabrication – I never wear the clothes I work in outside of my studio. And I’m not a painter.

  Dilip is prone to exaggeration. He says his sister is beautiful when she is decidedly not. He calls a lot of people nice who don’t deserve it. I assign this to his being both beautiful and nice. Dilip also talks about the millions of friends he has back home, but only four came to Pune for our wedding. Not that I minded. Our wedding lasted only two days, at my insistence, which his mother said was not long enough to travel for. His parents and sister came from the States with half a dozen of their other relatives. My grandmother said Gujaratis from America make a disappointing wedding procession.

  In the lead-up, Dilip’s mother gave her astrologer my date and time of birth to ensure my stars aligned with her son’s. The truth is my mother lost my birth certificate years ago, during the time we were homeless, and because looking into the official birth record would have been a hassle, we invented something that seemed like a fair approximation.

  ‘I know it was dark,’ Ma said.

  ‘That narrows it down to early in the morning or late at night,’ I replied.

  We told Dilip’s mother I was born at 8
.23 in the evening, 2023 hours in military time, deciding on the twenty-three because anything that ended in zero or five might seem made up. Four months before the wedding, Dilip’s mother called me at home.

  ‘The pandit spoke to me,’ she said. ‘He’s very concerned.’

  A birth chart had been made for me, a chart to represent the sky at the moment I was born. Mangal, the red planet, was found to be in a dangerous aspect, placed squarely in the house of marriage.

  ‘You’re a manglik, that’s what they call people like you,’ she said. The line was fuzzy, and I missed the rest of the accusation. She explained that if I married her son, my fiery energies could kill him. I remained silent for a while, wondering if this was their way out: had Dilip asked his mother to call and break our engagement? I could hear her breathing, opening and closing her moist lips close to the receiver. Maybe she expected an apology. I didn’t offer one.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ she said, when the length of silence had passed into uncomfortable. ‘The pandit has a cure.’

  The next day a pandit appeared at our door. He was not my mother-in-law’s priest but a local ambassador chosen to set things right.

  ‘What is this?’ Ma said as we watched him place a woven mat on the floor of the flat.

  ‘Too much of the planet Mars,’ the pandit said. ‘It’s bad for her husband.’

  ‘Superstitious nonsense.’ Ma pulled a stick of incense from his hand and began waving it around his head.

  The man continued his work, unperturbed. He arranged fruit in steel trays. Then flowers. Milk. There were saris and embroidered red cloth. He seated himself in front of an earthen pot and lit a fire with ghee, wood chips and newspaper.

  The torpor of summer was upon us, and the inside of the flat felt like a pressure cooker. I sneezed and a ball of dark snot landed in my palm, thick and bloody like a tumour. I was sure this was a bad omen and wiped it on the skin under my tunic. The pandit layered red and orange fabrics on top of several wood blocks. He moved his hands quickly, making swastikas out of uncooked grains of rice, placing whole betel nuts here and there to represent the planets in the cosmos, anointing them with some benediction that escaped me.

  I sat down in front of four bronze idols. They were no more than ten centimetres tall, swathed and garlanded.

  ‘Today, this is your husband,’ the pandit said.

  I looked at the gods. Their faces were mostly the same, except Ganesh, whose tusk curved in a smile.

  ‘What? All?’

  ‘No, only this one. Vishnu.’ The pandit smiled. ‘He will absorb your bad energies by marrying you first, so your next husband doesn’t suffer.’

  Vishnu looked delicate, with an aquiline nose and a shortened chin.

  ‘Do I have to do this?’ I asked the holy man. ‘Can’t we just tell everyone I did it?’

  The pandit didn’t answer.

  The ceremony was long, longer than my wedding to Dilip would be a few months later, and full of chanting. I circled the fire, holding the small deity in my arms, watching his motionless face. A simple mangalsutra was placed around my neck and a crimson line of sindoor in my parting, to symbolize I was a married woman. After the ceremony, the necklace was ripped off and the red paste smeared across my forehead.

  ‘Married and divorced,’ the pandit said. I looked in the mirror. There was an imprint that the hook of the necklace had left on my skin. My face was speckled with red. It was a violent business. The priest shook my hand. Then he asked for a donation and a cup of tea.

  A month before our wedding, I accompanied Dilip on the four-hour drive to Bombay airport to collect his mother. He hired a driver and a large air-conditioned Innova to accommodate all her luggage. By the time we arrived, she was standing outside with a porter, fanning herself with a brochure and shooing away taxi drivers. She wasn’t a tall woman, but she took up space where she stood, bumping passersby with her elbows and blocking the path with her wide stance. Her woven sunhat, sandals, trousers and T-shirt were all the same shade of pink. I thought I detected a scowl on her face until she laid eyes on her son. The sunhat drooped a little as she waved wildly in our direction.

  ‘I haven’t been back here in ten years!’ she said in greeting. She was wide awake as we drove over the dramatic Western Ghats, pointing out every pile of garbage along the highway and shaking her head. I told her that the hills were beautiful in the monsoon, misty and wet from the rain, even though the summer sky now was an unimpressive bright sheet of white. Her incredulity skyrocketed at every toll booth, which, she noted, had been built without taking the average height of a vehicle or the length of a human arm into account, and two men were required as go-betweens to hand over money to the toll officer.

  ‘This country,’ she sighed. ‘I suppose it’s a way to give everyone a job. Hire three where only one is needed.’

  When we reached Pune, the wide highway decorated with brightly coloured billboards gave way to narrow lanes with small businesses – motels, restaurants and bike shops dotted the road. As we waited at a traffic light, two young boys came out from a makeshift slum nearby. Both squatted, rubbing their eyes and yawning.

  ‘Oh God,’ Dilip’s mother said, ‘look at these guys. Can’t they go behind their house? There is a toilet sign right there.’

  I imagined the toilets were less than suitable but said nothing, hoping instead that the car in front of us would move. But it didn’t, and the two boys were joined by a third friend who came closer to the kerb.

  ‘This is crazy,’ she cried.

  ‘Leave them alone,’ Dilip said, laughing.

  ‘Shameless,’ she said. Pulling her phone from her bag, she began recording them. I crossed my arms, hoping they wouldn’t notice, but realized they had when all three stood up and faced our car at the same time.

  Fortunately, the lights changed. Dilip’s mother laughed as we drove away, and watched the video repeatedly for the rest of the drive. I tried to divert her attention – it was her first time in Pune – by pointing out the large green expanse of the army base, the deep shade that covered us as we passed beneath some ancient banyan trees. Pune was inland and the air was dry, cold in the winter and dusty in the summer, but never wet and putrid like what one experienced in Bombay. I suggested a list of places we could visit – the historical Shaniwar Wada fortress that had been the seat of the local Peshwa dynasty, a small but beautiful Shiva temple, and my favourite sweet shop on Main Street, in case she felt like indulging. We drove past the Pune Club, where our wedding and reception would be held, and I tried to impress upon her how special it was for me to get married there, that my grandparents had been members for over forty years, and even though my mother had never shown interest, Dilip and I would be given membership soon. It was also the first place where Dilip and I had discussed marriage, over a beer, after a late Sunday swim. I didn’t mention some of the other memories I had of the place, of sitting like a beggar beyond those hallowed gates. Some things were better saved for after the wedding.

  Dilip’s mother peered in, nodding, and a thin smile appeared on her mouth. ‘The British built some lovely buildings.’

  *

  The weeks before the wedding were the hottest of the summer. Only the brave ventured outside. Cows, dogs and humans dropped dead in the streets. Cockroaches came to pay their respects. It was a particularly hot day when my mother-in-law and Dilip came to our flat for lunch. I cursed Pune for making a bad impression. I felt responsible for everything abhorrent about it, things I hadn’t noticed before. The heat was not just hot, it was unbearable. The air was not just thick, it was unbreathable. I believed I had become sensitized to the normal faults and dysfunction of our lives through Dilip’s standards and preferences, but it was only with the arrival of his mother that I realized he had become immune to some discomfort over time. I was anxious about every flaw while being hyperconscious that some flaws might add to the city’s charm. How much did I want to misrepresent where I lived – and who I was – and could I even recognize
what was a desirable cover-up and what was not?

  Dilip and his mother drank coconut water and sour nimbu pani, unaware that I had spent the previous week arranging the wreckage of the home I shared with my mother, repainting the bubbling walls, taking down cracked mirrors and mending torn sofa covers.

  My mother-in-law was fond of dressing in unusual colours and, we realized, of hats. Ma covered her smile when they walked in, and I, too, could not ignore the absurdity of the lady’s attire. She was not, I knew, a woman of exceptional taste or perception, and yet her disapproval of Pune wounded me.

  After lunch, we sat on our small terrace and discussed the wedding to-do list. It was the time of day when the neighbours crowded on to their balconies, which were designed to look like little boxes stacked on top of each other. They waved their arms to shoo away pigeons and crows, and fingered the laundry they’d hung to dry in the afternoon sun.

  Perspiration appeared on our faces. Three storeys below, I could see the top of a head, a woman’s head, with scanty hair at the crown and a thick salt-and-pepper braid that wrapped around itself. I could hear the sound of her broom, made of reeds and tied together, scraping the ground as the leaves and dirt rustled and fell, rustled and fell, into some version of their previous order. Smoke wafted in the air, carrying the smell of fuel and burning garbage, but we didn’t move to go inside. The sounds within the compound were quiet in comparison to the low, billowing horn from the nearby railway tracks whenever a train passed.

  I looked at the hazy sky and tried to feel content, content to know that even though I had spent so many years here, at last I would be leaving. I looked at Dilip. He was handsome and tall in a way that let everyone know he’d grown up abroad. Baseball caps, good manners and years of consuming American dairy. He was saving me, even though he didn’t know it. His mouth spread open in a smile at something my mother said, and I could see all of his thirty-two teeth, disciplined from years of adolescent braces.